


the words are all escaping and coming back all damaged

by an_ardent_rain



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, F/M, Gen, I'm Sorry, Minor Violence, POV Original Character, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8316136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_ardent_rain/pseuds/an_ardent_rain
Summary: During a routine night, someone sees Frank.  And then decides to help him - because even if he is the Punisher, he shouldn't just be left to die on the street.  And after all, who else does he have to help him?"He turns back to shut it and sees Karen kneeling, unwrapping the bloodstained bandages on her patient’s torso. And Frank’s looking at her rapt, so soft, an expression of calm on his face. He pushes her hair back from her face, his fingers big and clumsy and excruciatingly gentle."





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was seriously supposed to be about 1000 words, just something a little funny and then sweet. And. I wrote this instead. I mean... I guess I like it? I don't know. My stupid hipster child original character's voice kind of took over. Anyway, turn back. There's still time.

Kai shakes his phone and says “Fuck.” He presses the home button again and again hoping that the phone will through magic or luck or the sheer force of his belief turn on again, but the screen stays unrepentantly dark. “This is just great,” he says through clenched teeth. He shoves his phone back in the pocket of his jacket, slouching down the dirty sidewalk with short, angry steps.

Of course his phone died just as he was waiting for a response, and of course Jamie had to be high as fuck in the first place and send completely incomprehensible text messages instead of a simple, clearly stated address. Kai runs a hand through his hair. The fake Ray Bans he’d been wearing earlier are still pushed up there and he takes them off, folds one of the arms down and hooks the other in the loose collar of his t-shirt.

He’s not going to be able to meet up with his friends, he has no idea where the hell they were going and with a dead phone there’s no way for him to find out. Which, he mutters to himself, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jeans, completely sucks, because this is the first night in a week he’s actually been able to afford to go out to places - decent places! almost clean places! - instead of sitting at home binge watching old shows and looking through his ex’s Instagram.

“I guess this is my life now,” he says, looking up at the red neon sign of the laundromat he passes. The air is crisp, just on the sharper side of cool, a bite in the air when the wind comes out. Kai shrugs his shoulders up, pulling the denim jacket tighter around him. 

It was Jamie’s fault, because he still played fucking Pokemon Go, and he wanted to catch a fucking pikachu, and if Kai hadn’t indulged him - _because I am a good friend_ , he reminds himself - then his phone wouldn’t be dead and he wouldn’t be going home to water his plants. Not that he doesn’t appreciate his plants, and those little bastards are going to get it good with the spray bottle tonight, but sometimes it was nice to talk to other humans. People who could actually talk back. People who did not ditch him at a bar to hook up with a girl they met at a concert the week before.

But instead of spending time with real people, he is again going home to alone with his plants. He tries to summon up some righteous indignation, but it never rises past a faint curl of serious annoyance and the glum acceptance of an unsurprising fate. The streets seem emptier, and the night darker, and Kai kicks at the sidewalk with the toe of his sneaker. 

There is a noise, a scuffle, that rouses his attention, and he looks over to his left expecting to see an argument, expecting to see something, but there’s nothing there. He shrugs and goes back to staring at the sidewalk. He’s only taken a few steps when the window next to him breaks with a loud crash, sending a rolling mass of man out towards the street

Kai screams and stumbles back. There are two men lying on the sidewalk. One groans and tries to sit up, swinging weakly towards the other man’s face. He misses and he groans, trying to push himself up on a shaky arm. There is a lot of blood, Kai notices, and both men look like they’re barely standing. The other man uses the man underneath him as leverage to help him get up. He puts a knee on his chest and sits up. He pulls out a gun and Kai’s eyes widen. He thinks for a second nothing is going to happen, that the gun is there to threaten and nothing more, there’s no way the man would shoot somebody in front of a witness, his hand as steady as a rock is going to lower the gun, lower it, any moment now and - 

A bullet pierces through the man on the ground’s forehead with a bang. Blood pools out thick and heavy from the back of his head and Kai is stuck, shocked, unable to move. He lets out a high-pitched sound, a half formed scream that hiccups out of his throat, and the shooter looks up at him with sharp eyes.

It’s the Punisher.

Kai’s body trembles and he wants to run away, he tells himself to run away, that’s all he wants in the world, he can’t remember wanting anything other than to be able to move. But his legs won’t lift, his feet weigh tons, and he feels frozen, stuck to the ground with some new, awful permanence.

The Punisher spits a mouthful of blood out onto the sidewalk. His teeth are stained a bright, bloody red. He stands up slow, with deliberate, creaky movements. Kai presses his lips together hard, because he’s not going to scream, he’s not going to scream, he’s not.

And then the Punisher falls.

“Shit,” he says, rolling off the man he just killed. He wipes his mouth and gets to his knees, breathing hard. 

Kai watches for a moment. The whole situation feels surreal and he wonders if he’ll be alive by the time the police come or if he’s going to be dead. “Please don’t kill me,” he says. It bursts out of him before he can stop it and he presses his hands to his mouth. “Oh my God,” he says, whining, his voice high and tight. “Please… Please don’t kill me, I’m. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never saw this, I never saw anything, I can’t… I can’t even see! I have face blindness. Who are you? I-I don’t know, I can’t see faces, what’s a face? I - “

“Shut the hell up.”

“Oh God,” Kai says, voice trembling. “I’m… Shutting up now, right now. I’m sorry. Please don’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says. His voice is rough and he looks at Kai with heavy brows drawn over his eyes. “Why? What did you do?”

“Nothing!” He whimpers. “Jesus, nothing, I swear, okay. I mean… It was just weed, I promise, and that was my friend Jamie’s fault anyway.”

“Shut up,” the Punisher says, looking disgusted. “I’m not going to kill you. Now get the hell out of here.”

“Yes, that is… That is a good idea.”

“Then leave! Fuck. I don’t have time for this, kid.” He tries to stand again, his face pulled taught in an expression of strain. He is obviously hurt and Kai’s mind spins, thinking of a plan. He could run - he _should_ run, that would be a good idea - or maybe he could take the Punisher out himself, right now, while he’s weak, so no one else will die, so he won’t die. Or he could… just stand here. And watch him bleed out.

“I want to leave,” he says, but he doesn’t move. “Um, but. I think you’re… dying.”

“I’m not dying.” He pulls himself upright and Kai can see the skull on his chest. It’s as intimidating as he imagined, and he feels dread pool in his stomach, rising like bile in his throat.

“S-so you just want me to leave you. Here. Bleeding out on the street.”

“Yes,” he says. He takes a step forward. “I’m fine.”

“Is this like… an assisted suicide kind of thing?” Kai looks around, but there aren’t really any more people than there were before. He wonders how long until he hears sirens - someone must have reported the gunshot. Probably, he thinks. They should have. He wouldn’t have reported it, but he’s kind of a piece of shit, he thinks, and he can deal with that. But he has higher expectations for the rest of humanity. Also his phone is dead, he reminds himself, which is really just the cherry on the cake, isn’t it, but there are more important things to deal with. There is a man bleeding out in front of him and a corpse between them, he’s trying not to think about it. “I mean, if I… If I leave you, you’re going to die. I think. It really looks like you’re going to die.”

“I have somewhere to go. Now leave before I decide I am going to kill you.” He snarls and Kai is terrified, but he’s also wondering how culpable he is if the Punisher dies, and wondering how quickly it takes Stockholm Syndrome to set in. 

“You only kill people who deserve it, right?”

He grits his teeth. It looks like it pains him to speak when he says “Yes.”

Kai breathes. “Okay, then, I… You’re not going to kill me. And I can’t. I don’t think I can just let you bleed out here. Can I… Do you need an ambulance or… ?

“I’m not going to a fucking hospital.” He’s holding his side and obviously favoring one leg. “Just leave me alone, get out of here now.”

“Um, I really. I mean I _really_ want to do that, but I can’t just.” He bites his lip and wishes again that his phone wasn’t dead. “You look like shit and there’s a body here and even if it was a bad guy - and I’m going to assume this guy was, I really really hope he was - that’s still not… you know, good, so maybe you should leave. We should both leave. Please just tell me you have a plan for not dying so I can go.” 

The look he is getting does not inspire much confidence, because the Punisher is looking at him like he’s the unreasonable one and that is more than he can handle, the terror he felt slowly turning inside out into hysteria. It’s not funny, it’s so far from funny, but Kai can feel laughter bubbling up and if he doesn’t find a way to stop it’s going to burst out and then he may be the only person in the world who annoyed the Punisher into killing him. All murder is wrong, he thinks, but he doesn’t want to be the one to make the guy cross the line into extra-wrong murder.

“My murder would be extra wrong,” he blurts out, to stave off the hysterical laughter, but the look he gets at that is worse and he laughs anyway. “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” he says. “None of this is funny. It’s not funny. Please, like I said, just. I can’t leave you if I think you’re going to die. If you aren’t going to go to a hospital, isn’t there some sort of… doctor, like secret vigilante doctor, you could see?”

“Can’t,” he says. “Might be somebody I could call, but my phone got fucked up in the fight. Let me use yours if you’re so goddamned worried about it.”

“I can’t,” Kai says, “my phone is dead. This is awful, fuck, this is the reason everything in this night has gone wrong, I would never be here if my phone hadn’t died, everything would be fine.”

The Punisher rolls his eyes and Kai thinks he’s going to hyperventilate. He accidentally glances down at the corpse on the sidewalk in front of him and he has to cover his mouth to keep from throwing up. He heaves and squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his palms to his face. “Okay so we have no phone and there’s a body here and I’m going home, yep, right now, so please tell me you have a plan so I can go feel guilty about this dead guy in peace and never leave my house again because I was wrong, I don’t need people, I have my plants, I never want to see another person again.”

“I’m going. I got somewhere I can go.”

 _Oh thank God_ , Kai breathes. He takes his hands down off his face and looks over. The Punisher is staring out at a building on the other side of the street, a little ways down from where they’re standing. His eyes cut back down to Kai. “Aren’t you…” He swallows and regrets speaking before he even gets the words out. “Do you live there? Are you just going to walk in? I mean… You were already arrested once, right, I just don’t know if you’re making good decisions.”

Kai watches his jaw tighten. “I don’t have to worry about that. Go up the fire escape.”

He’s not going to do it, he’s not going to do it, he doesn’t want to help him, he tells himself he’s going to walk away. He watches the Punisher limp forward about ten steps before he realizes with a sense of inevitable dread that he’s going to help whether he likes it or not.

* * *

Carrying a large, fully-grown man up a fire escape is not easy, but Kai isn’t just going to leave him there. After a growl the Punisher had passed out and Kai isn’t sure what else he can do other than just tug him up the stairs before he falls. “Hey,” he says, slapping his face. “Hey, oh my God, wake up okay? Please.” He slaps harder. There is absolutely nothing to that but his desire to wake him up, Kai is really, really close to sure. 

He twitches and then blinks his eyes open. “Fuck.” He groans and shakes Kai off. 

“You passed out.”

He grunts at Kai and continues climbing. They go up two more floors before he sags, kneeling on the landing, with what Kai chooses to characterize as relief. He knocks on the window, two short knocks, before he passes out again.

Kai is about to panic, looking around wildly for somewhere to hide, when suddenly the window opens and a woman’s head sticks out. “Frank?” she asks, concerned. “Are you - “ She spots Kai and her face immediately shutters. “Who the hell are you?” she asks.

“He… He shot a guy in front of me,” Kai says, “and then he kind of collapsed and I thought he was going to die. I mean I really thought he was going to die. His phone was destroyed, my phone’s battery died, and he said he had somewhere to go but he could hardly walk by himself so I, uh.” He clears his throat and nudges the Punisher’s limp body. “I mean I’m Kai. That’s my… That’s my name. Kai.”

“He’s not going to die,” she says, ignoring Kai and giving the unconscious lump of man beside him a thorough once over. “He probably pulled his stitches along with whatever happened tonight. Might have passed out from the pain. Help me get him inside.”

She steps through the window onto the fire escape and wraps an arm around the Punisher’s shoulder. Kai grabs his legs and together they hoist him up and into the apartment. The woman climbs in and, when she leaves the window open, Kai follows. He shuts the window and tries not to look around the apartment. This is awkward, he thinks, so awkward, and he is beginning to regret that he ever even left his apartment in the first place that night. 

The Punisher starts awake with a jerk and the woman is kneeling down beside him the next second. “Ma’am,” he says, hoarse, and he sits up with her arm across his shoulders. 

“Hey,” she says. Her voice is soft, surprisingly so, and Kai wonders exactly how they know each other. “Jesus, Frank, what happened?”

“Remember last week? Think I opened it up again.” He stands - barely, Kai thinks - and with the woman’s help makes it over to a chair at a table in the kitchen. The apartment is small, just one big room, but it’s cozy and well-lived in. 

“You said your name is Kai, right?” the woman asks. She’s not looking at him, helping take off the Punisher’s vest and shirt, leaving him in nothing but skin wrapped in bloody bandages. Her tongue clicks and her brows wrinkle when she sees them.

“Right,” he says. “That’s me.” He feels awkward just standing there not helping, with nothing to do but watch the two of them - the Punisher and this slim, blond woman with delicate features and careful hands. She’s beautiful, Kai thinks. And it is very clear that she has done this before, been in this same position. She’s not scared of him at all. Kai isn’t even near him really and he’s still fighting back terror, feeling fear sweats, but she’s right in his space, touching him and tending to his wounds like it was something she dealt with everyday. She’d even called him _Frank_ , like he’s a person. Which is his name, Kai supposes, because he _is_ a person, at least technically, even if most of what made him human has been scraped out of him.

“I’m Karen,” she says, standing behind the Punisher’s chair, and for the first time she seems nervous. Kai has never been the best at reading people, but she can’t hide it, she’s broadcasting nerves like a signal fire. He can’t imagine how a woman who can look the Punisher in the face and chastise him for pulling his stitches would look even remotely nervous talking to him. “Since you helped him, I’m going to assume you’re not immediately going to run to the police when you leave here.”

Kai’s eyes widen and he clenches his hands into fists. “Are you… Are you kidding me? I’m not going to even remember this happened. I am not going to the police ever, I am not going to go to anyone ever. That seems like a really great way to get myself murdered.” He looks over at the Punisher and tries to make his face as sincere as possible. “ _Please_ don’t kill me.”

“Long as you keep your damn mouth shut you won’t have to worry about me.”

“Jesus, Frank,” Karen says. She scowls at the back of his head and then looks over at Kai. “He’s not going to kill you,” she says, “not even if you go to the police.”

“He knows where you live, Karen,” the Punisher says - whose name is Frank, like he’s just some regular guy, who has a gorgeous woman to call him Frank and tend to his wounds even after he murders somebody in front of a witness. “And he knows you know me.” 

Karen sighs. “Kai, tell me what you see. I’m taking care of a dog.” Kai is completely lost, and his mouth falls open. Bewilderment, he thinks. That’s what he’s feeling. She gives him a look that he thinks is supposed to explain everything. “My dog got hurt, right? He got out, and somebody cruel found him, tried to hurt him, and all you did was bring him home.”

“Sure,” Kai says, though her story is ridiculous. He doesn’t believe for a second he’s safe just because this one woman says so, but he’s willing to agree with just about anything to get himself out of this situation in one piece. “That’s… Completely plausible. You have a dog. I found the dog. He had a collar and that’s how I found you, and you were so grateful you promised to keep your dog from attacking me and then I went home and we all forgot any of this ever happened.” He laughs, before he can stop himself. “That’s exactly… Exactly what happened.”

“That’s right,” the Punisher says, in a voice that’s more growl than anything. It is obvious he is trying to be intimidating and it is working - although wholly unnecessary, because Kai was already intimidated, so intimidated, just from being in the same room as him, just from seeing him. “That’s what happened and then we all forgot any of this ever happened. You don’t remember her name, what she looks like, where she lives.”

“Oh my God,” Kai whispers to himself. He wants to cry, just a little, because how did he get mixed up in this? All he wanted to do was go home and charge his phone, he never asked for any of this. “I swear, I swear okay? Oh my God, I can’t even, I can’t even remember anything now. What’s happening? What’s going on? Where am I? I think as soon as I leave this building I will contract a terrible case of really specific amnesia.”

He’s being stared down by the darkest, most dangerous eyes he’s ever seen and he believes this is a man who knows death. Then Karen puts a hand on his shoulder - on the Punisher’s shoulder, on Frank’s shoulder, Frank Castle Kai’s mind supplies - and all that darkness recedes. He sits back and glances up at her. Their eyes hold for a second, then another, and Kai feels even more awkward, watching something so unfamiliar, so _intimate_. He’s not sure if the metaphor was deliberate, but he can believe this woman holds the leash. 

Karen leans down and whispers something Kai can’t hear, her hair falling in a soft curtain around them, like spun gold across his shoulders. There’s another moment where all they do is look at each other and then the Punisher grunts and nods. Karen looks pleased and she straightens up and glances back to Kai. “Okay,” she says. “Frank, you’re staying here tonight so you can get patched up. Kai, thank you for helping him, but why don’t you head home?”

Kai has never in his life been happier to be told to go home. “Yes,” he says, breathless. “Yes, I… I really want to do that. So i’ll just go then. Right. Good night strange woman I have no memory of. Good night, uh.” Looking at the Punisher is still terrifying because Frank Castle is a large, intimidating man. Kai’s brain stutters and he speaks before he can think better if it. “Good night, uh, the Punisher. Mr. Punisher. Sir.” He swallows, cuts his losses and heads for the door. 

He turns back to shut it and sees Karen kneeling, unwrapping the bloodstained bandages on her patient’s torso. And he’s looking at her rapt, so soft, an expression of calm on his face. He pushes her hair back from her face, his fingers big and clumsy and excruciatingly gentle. Kai’s heart pounds and he feels nauseated. Rattled. This is something no one else is meant to see, a quiet moment when the beast is put to bed. He takes a shaky breath and shuts the door. Everything seems different, suddenly, the strange night and his fear a world away. 

That lasts a moment, and then he turns and sprints down the hall towards the elevator. He pushes the down button over and over muttering to himself. He is fairly sure he isn’t in immediate danger but he doesn’t feel safe. When the elevator finally opens, he steps inside and retreats to a corner. The tension leaves his body and he feels steady for the first time since that window burst and the Punisher rolled out. He wants to forget what happened, and he curses himself for being stupid enough to try to help in the first place. Clearly, whether he deserves it or not, he already has support. He has someone to care for him, who trusts him, who lets him into her home and touches him with gentle fingers and heals him. She trusted him, the Punisher, more than she trusted Kai. Like she cared about him, _knew_ him. Like she more than just cares for him, like she…

Kai swallows and wraps his arms around himself and doesn’t finish the thought, doesn’t think what he is sure is true.

He is cold, and he has never felt more alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I told you to turn back and yet here we are. (Psst, you should leave me a comment to make me feel better about this hot mess.) I seriously can't stop thinking about these two. Guess how many other fics I'm working on right now - if I can, I'm going to post the first chapter of a new long-fic either today or tomorrow. We'll see. Anyway! Thank you very much for reading this. Obviously the point was to show Karen and Frank through an outsider point-of-view, but again - I think the OC's POV kind of took over. Blah. Maybe I'll re-write this one day, I don't really feel like talking about it now, ha ha. I just recycled an old - very, very minor - OC, as Kai Maddox ends up a surly older gentleman who owns a bar in another story I've written. So, yeah. Also if you are thinking of asking me how they started climbing Karen's fire escape (does her building even have one omg I have thought this fic through exactly zero), then um RUDE how dare you question something I have obviously handwaved away. Eh heh heh heh, um...
> 
> Okay bye. Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://librarian-repellent.tumblr.com) if you want! I like new friends and fic prompts.


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